This is a fun family story about twins that overcome their fear of riding a school bus.

In this first novel of the National Park Adventure Series, sixteen-year-old Darrell Freeman narrates the story of his ten-year-old brother Jarod and their strange camping experiences among the weird trees and peculiar critters of Joshua Tree National Park in the California desert. While their Mom, a book illustrator, pursues her art, the boys take off in their vintage orange VW camper bus to see the park. Jarod, an indigo child with psychic abilities, is able to call up the native critters and talk with the Joshua Trees and granite boulders that are scattered everywhere. Thus the brothers learn that the area is not only ancient but sacred, and that the trees and boulders need help—their help. The park lies between two Earth faults and the Earth is beginning to rumble. The brothers start their quest at once to find the special tree and particular boulder that will tell them what to do. Meanwhile, a lady and man in a black SUV start their own quest to find the brothers and steal the strange buzzing rock Jarod found the first day. What causes the rock to buzz? No one knows. Before the tale is done the SUV people steal the rock, but the boys recover it with the help of a mysterious Indian shaman. Then they must find the “proper resting place” to bury the rock to stabilize the park. Do they succeed?

The bestselling author of Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel surveys the history of human societies to answer the question: What can we learn from traditional societies that can make the world a better place for all of us? “As he did in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond continues to make us think with his mesmerizing and absorbing new book." Bookpage Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only yesterday—in evolutionary time—when everything changed and that we moderns still possess bodies and social practices often better adapted to traditional than to modern conditions.The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past as it had been for millions of years—a past that has mostly vanished—and considers what the differences between that past and our present mean for our lives today. This is Jared Diamond’s most personal book to date, as he draws extensively from his decades of field work in the Pacific islands, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people, and others. Diamond doesn’t romanticize traditional societies—after all, we are shocked by some of their practices—but he finds that their solutions to universal human problems such as child rearing, elder care, dispute resolution, risk, and physical fitness have much to teach us. Provocative, enlightening, and entertaining, The World Until Yesterday is an essential and fascinating read.

Presents thousands of classic, traditional, and modern names along with information on the meanings, origins, and derivations of each name; tips for making the right selection; name trends; popular names of the past and present; and ethnic names.

Red Panda and Moon Bear are the defenders of their community! Together, these brave siblings rescue lost cats, scold bullies, and solve mysteries, all before Mama and Papa get home. But lately... the mysteries have been extra mysterious. All of RP and MB's powers may not be enough to handle spooks, supervillains, alien invaders, and time warps! It'll take all their imagination--and some new friends--to uncover the secret cause behind all these events before the whole world goes crazy.

"Fascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history."—Bill Gates In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion --as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war --and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth club of California's Gold Medal.

"After realizing he knew more about TVs than about the meat on his plate ... Jared Stone purchased an entire grass-fed steer and resolved to make the best use of it that he possibly could. [This book] follows the trials and tribulations of a home cook as he and his family try to form a more meaningful relationship with their food and the environment. From meeting the rancher who raised his cow to learning how to successfully pack a freezer with cow parts, Stone gets to know his steer and examines how previous generations ate, delving into the ways our ancestors prepared meals and the ethnography of cattle"--